Our History

Since 1967, our mission has been to help leaders become more successful and deliver the best possible results for their organisation. The core of Mercuri Urval is still our advisory capacity and our unique competence in finding, selecting and developing the right professionals and executives that fulfil our clients' needs.

How can we make sure we have the right people in place to deliver the best possible results?"

Today Mercuri Urval is a leading global Executive Search, Professional Recruitment and Talent Advisory firm. From being a small local company we have grown organically with our clients to become an international company with teams spread across the globe, wherever our clients need us.

How did the Mercuri Urval story start?

We were founded more than 50 years ago to answer a simple but important question that leaders face:

How can we make sure we have the right people in place to deliver the best possible results?

The story of Mercuri Urval started in 1967 in Stockholm (Sweden). The core business was to advise clients on hiring, promotion and development decisions. The advice given to clients was based on our founder´s scientifically developed method for predicting individuals´ success in specific jobs.

Predicting individuals' success in specific jobs"

By mid 1970's clients asked Mercuri Urval to run full recruitment processes. Our business grew at home in Sweden and started to expand in Europe. The first location being London UK, in 1974, closely followed by Denmark the same year.

1980–2000

Expansion was fast and within 5 years we were represented in Germany, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands. During 1980's and 1990's our company continued to grow internationally, with offices in 14 countries including Belgium and Switzerland, and the first non-European location – USA. Additionally we started to offer clients a broader range of services – now introducing Talent & Leadership Advisory such as coaching, capability review and bespoke talent services.

From 2000 til now

Early 2000's were characterised by further diversified service offering and an ambition to increase our size. We therefore began to rapidly increase the amount of international client work.

In the last few years we have re-organised the company to be "One Mercuri Urval" and implemented a large number of new central business functions and controls. In June 2016 our owner and founder donated the company to a Foundation. We are now owned by "Stiftelsen Mercuri Urval".